This is utterly frustrating and totally true. I think having to purchase a ridiculously overpriced software in order to usefully send documents to each other is against humanity and detrimental to society. We should all be using an open format for documents - especially for future compatibility. Pages for Mac is exactly like this, too.:( I'm surprised this is not the number one reason you've moved to MSOffice though.

I would guess that freemium games are what make them money. There's a lot of games out there that sell in game resources in order to progress more quickly - in this way you can give away a game and still make money. It's pretty wild.

This activity only dilutes the efforts to develop a FOSS alternative to MS Office.

"And we should only have one linux distro too! And only one car! And everyone should wear a turtleneck"

"But I don't like turtle-"

"SILENCE, HERETIC!"

Forking is fun, and everyone should be forking like rabbits. The strong code will survive and the weak will dwindle and die out from resource starvation. Forking is a healthy practice in FOSS and should not be shunned.

RMS' idea sounds kind of neat, but it suffers from a fatal problem: All that happens when you force crazy high taxes onto big companies is that they leave the US. This is exactly what's happening in France right now, with their recent tax reforms.

I don't think this is a concern we should worry about. Essentially, if what we are doing is *right* and *good* for the general populace, everyone else in the world will naturally follow suit.

You'd presumably have to convince a judge that your purpose for using the software in the first place was something other than engaging in or facilitating copyright infringement.... Good luck with that.

I would argue that unless they can prove what I've been sharing or downloading on the service was copyright infringement, I think they haven't got a case - it doesn't matter if the majority of users are downloading copyrighted items, what should matter is whether there is reasonable doubt that I was downloading copyrighted material. Essentially, "innocent until proven guilty".

Telecoms are skating on a fine line of "I can't take any more of this crap" to "I don't care enough about the crap I'm getting to cancel this". Apparently they're doing it well enough to make money.

I think it's a bit hyperbolic to claim that we as a majority of people will end up being sheep/cogs in a slaughterhouse in which our money is the ultimate goal. There is a tipping point, when that is though, I don't know. I just hope we can do get past this sort of thing without violence.

The network effect is where you need to use (random example) Skype because everyone else you need to talk to uses Skype, and Skype is not built on open standards in a way which would allow you to use an alternative.

have absolute control over what we can or cannot do with the devices we buy

I don't think this will happen - another company can swoop in and take the market share of disgruntled users if there are any. The only reason I can see people having to use a device they don't want to use is if they are *mandated* to do so - there's a reason Apple has been so successful in the phone market, and it's not because they have an iron grip on the users' testes.